Post caption
I’m soooo obsessed with barn quilts I had to make a little video about them! Have you ever seen a barn quilt IRL? Post a pic of any sightings in the comments. I’m also a sucker for quilters, textile artists, and artists who use quilt patterns and motifs in unexpected ways. If you know anyone doing cool work like that, tag them below too. Long live beauty in unexpected places!!
P.S. peep my insane childhood bedroom that my mom let me paint chroma key green lmao
#barnquilts #art #design #quilting #textiles
Transcript
What if I told you some of the country's most interesting graphic design is scattered across rural America? Across farmland, especially in the Midwest, you'll find these giant geometric patterns mounted onto barns. Bright colors, simple shapes, repeating stars and grids. And from a graphic design perspective, they're kind of incredible. They use the same basic principles designers use today. Geometry, repetition, symmetry, contrast, scale, and color. They're called barn quilts and they're amazing. The barn quilts we recognize today borrow visual language from traditional quilt patterns and blow it up to the scale of architecture. I grew up in Ohio and my grandmother is actually amazing at quilting. She handmade a queen-size quilt for every one of her nine grandkids. So I kind of always thought it was just normal, but I'm realizing quilting a blanket by hand or painting an enormous barn quilt is true craftsmanship. So we can't let it become a lost art. In today's age of efficiency and technology, having a barn quilt is an act of defiance in a way. A barn doesn't need decoration to worse, and yet someone still chose the pattern, chose the colors, and hand painted a huge piece of art where it could be seen from across a field. I believe it's human nature to think about form alongside function. We add color, we create symbols, we make things our own. And barn quilts are such a lovely reminder that visual design has always been a part of how we do that.
